Review Assails Spying in Md. By State Police

'Lack of Judgment' Cited

The Maryland State Police "significantly overreached" when they spied on peaceful opponents of the death penalty and the Iraq war and were oblivious to their violation of the activists' rights of free expression and association, an independent review concluded yesterday.

Calling the 14-month monitoring during the administration of then-Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R) a "systemic failure," former U.S. attorney and state attorney general Stephen H. Sachs said the police violated federal regulations and showed a "lack of judgment" when they entered personal information about some activists into a federal anti-terrorism database.

He said the covert monitoring was part of a broad effort by the state police Homeland Security and Intelligence Division to gather information on protest groups across Maryland by assembling a "protest groups portfolio." In the post-Sept. 11 world, "there was an 'end justifies the means, better safe than sorry' attitude," Sachs said at a news conference.

"There was a systemic obliviousness, a blind spot" to respecting civil liberties, he said.

Sachs found no evidence that the police officers chose their targets because they disagreed with the activists' political or ideological beliefs. "Each officer who participated in or supervised the investigation believed that he or she was promoting and protecting public safety," he wrote.

Gov. Martin O'Malley (D), who appointed Sachs to review the spying after it was revealed in public records obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland, called the case "a chapter about which none of us is particularly proud." He said government "must always be mindful" to protect the First Amendment rights of its citizens as it maintains public safety.

"My hope is that we could provide some assurance to the public that we took this matter seriously," O'Malley said. He has said that the spying did not continue under his administration.

Sachs recommended instituting regulations that forbid covert surveillance of protest groups unless the state police chief believes it is justified. He said that state databases should be purged of any intelligence that was wrongly collected and that each person who was a target of spying should be notified and allowed to see the information.

Col. Terrence B. Sheridan, the state police superintendent and an O'Malley appointee, said he will accept the recommendations. The state Senate Judiciary Committee has scheduled a hearing Tuesday on the spying, and the ACLU is pressing for new laws to address the issue.

ACLU attorney David Rocah said Sachs "has done a real service to the people of Maryland."

"What's in here is shocking and deeply troubling," he said of the 93-page report.

Mike Stark, an information technology contractor and death penalty opponent from Silver Spring who was targeted, said he would welcome "any proposed reforms" but wants more accountability.

"Is anyone going to get fired or reprimanded?" he asked.

Intelligence logs released by the ACLU in July showed that undercover agents infiltrated organizational meetings, rallies and e-mail lists of grass-roots groups from Takoma Park to Baltimore in 2005 and 2006. Using false identities, the agents went to extraordinary lengths to befriend the activists, attending small meetings of a handful of members, the report said.

One trooper "took significant steps to build trust with the subjects of her surveillance," the report said, on one occasion accepting an invitation to attend an antiwar art exhibit and reporting back in an e-mail to the activists that "everyone in the US" should see it and that she "got teary" describing it to her friends.

Another trooper offered words of comfort to Vernon Lee Evans Jr., a death row inmate who was on a telephone hookup at a meeting.

The spying began with an inquiry into protests of the scheduled executions of two death row inmates in 2005, but the targets expanded after police determined that some antiwar activists also were death penalty opponents. Top police commanders ordered the surveillance to continue even after it was clear that the protests were peaceful.

Neither Ehrlich nor Thomas E. Hutchins, the state police superintendent at the time, agreed to be interviewed in connection with the probe, Sachs said, though Hutchins is scheduled to testify before the Senate panel.